The Hague International Network THIN Extraordinary Session

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On the picture Andrew van Esch (director The Hague International Network) Mr Han ten Broeke, Dutch MP for VVD (Liberal Conservatives), Mr Nikola Dimitrov, Distinguished Fellow at The Hague Institute for Global Justice (former Ambassador for FYRM Macedonia), Dr Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy, Dutch Member of the European Parliament for D66 (Social Liberals).   By Roy Lie A Tjam. The Hague International Network (THIN) concurrently held its first meeting for 2017 on Friday 20 January with the investiture of the President of the USA Mr. Donald John Trump. The attendees of the event were able to follow the investiture ceremony live on gigantic screens.
Dr Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy, Dutch MEP for D66.
This event that was intended to analyse the investiture was graced by the presence of many illustrious individuals. Some Ambassadors and Diplomats joined the unique gathering in addition to members of the international community. After watching the ceremony, a panel of experts unpacked the proceedings.
Mr Nikola Dimitrov, Distinguished Fellow at The Hague Institute for
Global Justice.
Among them were:
  • Andrew van Esh (Director at THIN)
  • Han ten Broeke, the Dutch MP for VVD and spokesperson on Foreign Affairs. Over and above that, he also chairs the standing parliamentary commission for the Defence
  • Chris van Voorden, Director at Innovation Quarters who is also responsible for foreign investments
  • Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy, Dutch Member of the European Parliament for D66 who is also a specialist on environmental issues and climate change, and
  • Nikola Dimitrov, Distinguished Fellow of The Hague Institute for Global Security as well as a former Ambassador of Macedonia in Washington and the Netherlands.
Italian Ambassador, H.E. Mr Andrea Perugini and his wife.
The panel commented on the ceremony and foretold what the Trump administration will mean for Europe and the Netherlands in particular. The fabulous THIN meeting and screening took place at Brasserie Mondano of the World Trade Centre in The Hague.
A cross section of the public.
Photography by the Word Trade Center, The Hague.  

North American foreign chiefs appointed

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On the picture Luis Videgaray, Secretary of Foreign Affairs. United Mexican States: On 4 January 2017, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto appointed Luis Videgaray Caso in the capacity as “Secretary of Foreign Affairs“. In his first allocution in the latter position, he said about his policy, “Mexico would pursue a course of intelligence and dignity, opening the doors to dialogue”. Until late 2016 Videgaray Caso was Minister of Finance.
Chrystia Freeland, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
http://www.gob.mx/sre Dominion of Canada: On 10 January 2017, The Honourable Chrystia Freeland was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs during a cabinet reshuffle in Justin Trudeau‘s administration. Prior to this office she held the ministerial post of Minister of International Trade, and was responsible for the trade agreement with the EU. http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca

Japanese delegation unveils artwork donation to ICC

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Japanese delegation unveils artwork donation to International Criminal Court H.E. Hiroshi Inomata, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan to the Netherlands, Ms. Naoko Saiki, Director-General, International Legal Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Judge Silvia Fernández de Gurmendi, ICC President and Ms Fatou Bensouda, ICC Prosecutor unveiling the artwork (left); the “Peace and Justice Bell”(right) ©ICC-CPI On 23-24 January 2017, Ms. Naoko Saiki, Director-General, International Legal Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, visited the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, the Netherlands, and met with ICC President Judge Silvia Fernández de Gurmendi, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, and ICC Registrar Herman von Hebel. On 24 January, Ms. Naoko Saiki and H.E. Hiroshi Inomata, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan to the Netherlands unveiled a new artwork donation to the ICC. The artwork, the “Peace and Justice Bell”, has been modelled on the Hiroshima Peace Bell, which was cast in 1967 by the late Mr Masahiko Katori (1899-1988), a renowned bronze artist and bell-caster in Japan. The Hiroshima Peace Bell has since served as a symbol of peace, rung once a year at the annual Peace Memorial Ceremony of Hiroshima. Ms. Saiki stated in her remarks at the ceremony that the donation of this artwork symbolizes Japan’s longstanding pursuit of peace and, at the same time, its dedication to upholding the Court’s resolution to guarantee lasting respect for and the enforcement of international justice. The “Peace and Justice Bell” thus epitomizes the goals, values and principles represented by the Court. Expressing the Court’s gratitude to the government of Japan for the donation, the ICC President said: “This thoughtful gift reminds us that the two ideals of peace and justice are interrelated and must go hand in hand. I am confident that the Peace and Justice Bell, placed at the Court’s Permanent Premises, will serve as an inspiration for reflection and commitment to the goals of the Rome Statute.” Since the move to its new permanent premises in December 2015, the ICC received artwork donations from the Governments of Slovenia, Tunisia, Korea and Liechtenstein, representing their cultural heritage as well as reflecting the mandate of the Court.

Women Economic Forum to take place in The Hague this week

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On the picture His Excellency J. S. Mukul, Ambassador of India. By Liudmyla Palamar. Women Economic Forum (WEF) will take place in the World Forum in The Hague on the 27th and 28th of January 2017. The program of the international conference, aiming to foster empowering conversations and connections among women, will include a range of prominent speeches, professional workshops and networking events. Women Economic Forum takes place on a regular basis in different cities around the world. The conference in the Netherlands will be followed by multiple events in the USA, Canada, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cyprus and more than ten other countries. Being focused on mutually beneficial knowledge exchange, learning and networking Women Economic Forum creates an avenue for women to expand their professional and business connections.
H.E. Jean Pierre Karabaranga, Ambassador of Rwanda.
  The program of the WEF in The Hague includes the speeches of H.E. Alphonsus Stoelinga, Ambassador of Netherlands to India, H.E. J. S. Mukul, Ambassador of India to Netherlands, H.E. Dr. Momar Diop, Ambassador of Senegal to Netherlands, H.E. Jean Pierre Karabaranga, Ambassador of Rwanda to Netherlands, H.E. Judge Sanji Monageng,Vice-President, International Criminal Court, H.E. Judge Joyce Aluoch, First Vice-President, International Criminal Court and other prominent members of the diplomatic community. During the 2-day conference participants will also have an opportunity to attend a broad range of workshops and parallels on diverse topics such as “EU – Creating Environment for Sustainable & Inclusive Growth,” “The Future for Youth,” “Social Media and Youth,” etc. Among other side events, a workshop titled “The Happy Me” will be organized by the author of the book “Life Outside Your Comfort Zone” Marwa Saleh. The professional trainer from Dale Ca
Marwa Saleh
rnegie Corporation, will give an engaging training, designed “to help people start removing their limiting beliefs.”   Information: More information about the Women Economic Forum (WEF) can be found on the official website of the event: www.wef.org.in More information about “The Happy Me” workshop can be found on http://www.wef.org.in/marwa-saleh/

IX President of Malta opens Maltese EU presidency

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Monday, 16 January 2017, Brussels: HM the VII King of the Belgians received the IX President of Malta, Marie Louise Coleiro Preca for an afternoon meeting concerning Belgian-Maltese relations as well as the state of the European Union as Malta assumed the rotating presidency of the council from 1 January 2017.  The meeting between King Philippus and President Coleiro Preca took place at the centrally located Royal Palace of Brussels.  Later in the evening President Coleiro Preca partook at the inaugural reception, and subsequent concert to open the Maltese EU presidency. In her remarks to attending EU authorities, EU permanent representatives, ambassadors and officials of the EU and Belgium, President Coleiro Preca called for European unity as well as a common ground in dealing with the refugee crisis in spite of its unpopularity in many countries.  The Centre for Fine Arts BOZAR in Brussels was the venue for the prestigious opening attended likewise by Malta’s Prime Minister Dr Joseph Muscat, and co-hosted by the Maltese Permanent Representative to the EU, HE Ambassador Marlene Bonnici and bilateral ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and NATO, HE Ray Azzopardi.    Programme for the Maltese Presidency of the EU Council: https://www.eu2017.mt/Documents/Maltese%20Priorities/EU2017MT%20-%20Presidency%20Priorities%20(EN).pdf https://www.facebook.com/EU2017MT   Photography by the Belgian Royal Household.      

The Ambassador  of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, H.E. Ms. Ngo Thi Hoa

H.E. Mrs. Ngo Thi Hoa is the new Ambassador of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to the Kingdom of the Netherlands. She is bringing decades-worth of diplomatic experience to her new term in The Hague along with a very clear goal.

After graduating from the Diplomat Academy of Vietnam in 1987, Mrs. Hoa spent the next few years honing her foreign language skills. In addition to French and English, which she learned in the Academy, she studied Russian at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in Ukraine throughout 1988. After returning to Hanoi, Vietnam, she also spent time learning Khmer until 1989.

When she joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam (MOFA) in 1991, Mrs. Hoa was assigned to be an expert in the Southeast Asia – South Asia – South Pacific Department (SEA-SA-SP). She served her first term abroad as an attache at the Embassy of Vietnam in the Philippines from 1996 to 1999, during which she earned her Master’s degree in International Studies at De La Salle University situated in Manila.

After returning from the Philippines, she was appointed as the Assistant to the Director-General of the SEA-SA-SP Department and later promoted to be the department’s Deputy Director-General in 2005. Three years later, Mrs. Hoa served her second term abroad in Cambodia as Minister and Deputy Chief of Mission until 2011.

Following her term in Phnom Penh, she was appointed Deputy Director-General of the Personnel Department as well as the head of the Women’s Committee at MOFA. Two years later, Mrs. Hoa was appointed Inspector in Chief – a position she held until her third term abroad. In 2016, she was named the Ambassador to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and she recently presented her credentials to His Majesty King Willem-Alexander on January 25th, 2017.

In the upcoming years, Mrs. Hoa aims to strengthen and elevate the multi-faceted cooperative relationship between Vietnam and the Netherlands. She wishes to facilitate more collaboration between these two countries, especially in the areas of climate change, water management, modern agriculture, and more. Her additional goals during this term are also to promote Vietnamese culture and support the Vietnamese community here in the Netherlands. She has her mind set on organizing an array of events and activities to achieve these aims.

Furthermore, Mrs. Hoa hopes to successfully represent her country in the multilateral domain as Vietnam is a member of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Committee of The Hague.

In her free time, Mrs. Hoa likes to do sports (such as cycling, tennis, and golf), reading, watching movies, traveling, and she is also a foodie. Additionally, she is passionate about feminism and charity as well. Mrs. Hoa wishes to bring these hobbies and interests into the events that she will hold in the future; at the moment, she is already thinking about an event that would promote Vietnamese cuisine.

In addition to her aforementioned hobbies, Mrs. Hoa is also interested in home decor and gardening. The Vietnamese Embassy recently moved to a new location and the building is currently under renovation, meaning that it is a blank canvas waiting to be painted on. Upon knowing this, she is extremely thrilled to decorate the embassy in a way that would showcase the Vietnamese style. The idea is to have traditional Vietnamese decor and artwork displayed throughout the embassy, with flowers and trees being in various places including the courtyard.

The diplomat community in The Hague sends a warm welcome to Ambassador Hoa and we are very excited to see her ideas come to fruition.

The Feel at Home in The Hague Fair

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Welcoming Internationals to The Hague  On Sunday 5th February 2017, The Feel at Home in The Hague Fair will celebrate its 10th Anniversary.  The Fair will be officially opened by the Mayor of The Hague, Jozias van Aartsen, who will address a special welcome to the international community which plays such an important role in the region. More than 4000 visitors attended the event in the Hague City Hall in 2016 and appreciated the unique ambiance created by the combination of 150 diverse exhibitors with a dynamic programme of activities and entertainment, workshops and seminars.   A meeting point for the whole community  No other expat event in the Netherlands engenders quite the same sense of community as The Hague Feel at Home Fair, where nearly a half of the stands are local sports and social clubs or volunteer organisations. These groups exhibit free of charge and relish the opportunity to network, advertise their activities and recruit new members.   Showcase for Small Businesses  Alongside these community groups are dozens of small business stands, many of them run by internationals who themselves moved to The Netherlands as an expat. They take great pleasure in animating the Fair with activities, tastings and performances which help them to connect with fellow internationals.  A Free Seminar Programme This year, Education will be the central theme, covering the range of educational choices from pre-school to adult education. Contributors to the Education Programme of talks, seminars and workshops  include many of region’s international schools and universities, and visitors will also have the opportunity to meet the speakers and panelists informally in the Education Zone. There will also be a complementary series of seminars and workshops on all aspects of life in The Netherlands, from buying a house to learning about Dutch culture. Attendance at all seminars and workshops is free. Entertainment and Food  The day is made richer through a lively entertainment programme provided by our international schools, amateur clubs and local professional cultural organisations. This year, with its focus on culture, the Fair will be especially animated, with three different performance spaces – The Podium, Central Park and STET’s Children’s Theatre.  Furthermore, The Feel at Home in The Hague Fair will be taking its entertainment programme out into the city centre, with some performances being repeated in De Bijenkorf department store. The icing on the cake is an International Food Court taking a culinary trip around the World, from Africa to India, Peru and back to Europe . The combination of these elements  gives the Feel at Home in The Hague Fair a unique flavour, which explains why the event plays such a special role as a meeting point for the entire international community.  A Dynamic International City As you might expect, around a fifth of our visitors last year were newcomers to The Netherlands, but perhaps more surprisingly, over a third had lived here more than 10 years! What these two groups had in common was a desire to learn more about things to do and events and activities happening in their region.     By showcasing the huge range of clubs to join and things to do locally, The Feel at Home in The Hague International Community Fair is a celebration of the region as an interesting and dynamic place for internationals to live. For Internationals and internationally-minded locals to come meet with friends and share in the pleasure of the great city of The Hague.  Registering for Free Tickets  Entrance is free for visitors who register in advance on our website: www.feelathomeinthehague.com  On our website and  Facebook page visitors  can also keep up to date with developments    

Indonesia Festivity

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By Roy Lie A Tjam. The Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in the Netherlands under the acumen leadership of Ambassador H.E. I Gusti A. Wesaka Puja, hosted the Indonesia Cultural Festivity or Gebyar Budaya Indonesia on  December 26th, 2016. Hundreds of guests descended upon Emplaza Hall, Rijswijk in order to participate in what could only be called an incredibly interactive and exciting way to end the year. The festival helped to showcase the harmonious and rich aspects of Indonesian culture. The night began with a welcome address by Ambassador Puja who thanked everyone for attending; the following groups participated in the program: Stichting Peduli Seni, Ina Dance, Boi Akih Band, Leidhsche 1922, Bandit Band, OEsman Arif & Silvia van Santen Jazz Trio, Night Breaker and  Justin Palmeley. Furthermore, as expected of Indonesian hospitality, several food stalls provided the vast number of guests with the range of savoury Indonesian dishes. Gebyar Budaya Indonesia was the last event in the busy 2016 calendar (Culinary week Rotterdam, Film week, Jazz Festival) hosted by the Indonesian Embassy and it will certainly go down into history as an unforgettable day. .  

The Majida Mouasher Collection

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Modern and Contemporary Arab Art from the Levant The Haque will witness for the first time an exhibition fully dedicated to modern and contempory Arab art from the Levant. It will be organized mainly by the wives of former diplomats who established the Foundation for the Promoting Art from the Middle East (BKM) The collection belongs to Majida Van der Meulen- Mouasher the wife of a former EU ambassador to Jordan. Her collection will be exhibited from 22nd January until 22nd February 2017 at Pulchri Studio, The Hague,under the patronage of HRH Princess Wijdan al-Hashemi. Majida Mouasher is chairman of the BKM and her fellow board members are Vanessa Bentinck and Luitgard Mols. ‘We need art more than ever before. We live in a time when we try to deal with our problems and try to describe our world through words, figures and logic. But to understand humans and to look at the bigger shifts – the tectonic plate shifts in the human condition, so to speak – we need to rise above, or go below, the 24/7 news cycle, and we need art to give us a different language to understand the human condition.’ Kasper Holten, Director of Opera, Royal Opera House, London Majida Mouasher was the owner of the 4 Walls Art gallery in Amman, Jordan between 2000 and 2006. During that time, she worked with more than ninety artists, forty-four of whom form the nucleus of her stunning and vital private collection comprised of modern and contemporary Arab art from the Middle East in general and the Levant in particular, and spanning over sixty years of outstanding quality art. At the time, there were very few contemporary galleries to be found in Jordan and artists were largely dependent on their own personal efforts and contacts to promote their work. There was a vacuum that needed to be filled and a public demanding to see contemporary art and get to know the artists. The aim of 4 Walls was to promote the artists by exhibiting their works and helping to sell them. Throughout that period, Majida Mouasher consistently bought work from these artists. What makes this collection so unique is its astonishing diversity, despite the fact that the Levant is so heavily represented. The artists all have deep cultural roots in whatever the source of their inspiration might be, whether that is China, Russia, the West, or their own country of origin. Though many of them are now living in the diaspora, they all have in common an honest reaction to their environment, their cultural and social or historical backgrounds, their ethnic origins or political upheavals. The wars and instabilities in the Middle East have forced people to move across continents and to the shorelines of Europe, bringing with them new and different cultural ways. Now that the Middle East is so much in the spotlight, an urgency exists to show its contemporary art to the Western public. Art is able to bypass conflicts, to enhance and promote understanding between cultures. At the occation of the exhibition a book is published with an overview of the collection. The texts are by Majida Mouasher; HRH Princess Wijdan al-Hashemi PhD (painter and founder and president of the Royal Society of Fine Arts, Amman, Jordan); Nada Shabout PhD (Professor of Art History and Director of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Studies Institute at the University of North Texas) and Dr. Luitgard Mols (owner of Sabiel: Research, Curating, Education and Consultancy in Islamic Art, lecturer in Islamic art at the University of Amsterdam).  

A British Secondary School

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The British School in The Netherlands  today announces its plans to expand its primary school campus in Leidschenveen to include a secondary school, which will generate up to 550 additional learning places. The development of a secondary school at the existing Junior School Leidschenveen (JSL) campus is testament to the BSN’s ambition to create a learning continuum (from the ages of 3-18) with purpose-built design. When discussing the school’s plan for growth, CEO/Principal Kieran Earley commented: “Our plans are not to grow in an acquisitive way but we see this as an opportunity to continue our organic growth whilst continuously meeting demand.” The Leidschenveen campus development addresses the growing demand for international education not only in The Hague area, but in The Netherlands. Subject to planning approval, the expansion will add 7202 m2 to the existing 9567 m2 of the current JSL facilities. In September 2018, the school will welcome its first cohort of secondary school students in Year 7 (ages 11-12).  It is planned for the secondary school to grow year on year as it adds a Year 7 cohort each new school year. More information, please visit here: http://britsc.nl/2BDkqpC   Â